When she took the bandage off her mouth

she found her lips in the mirror

dead as doorknobs, needing to be turned

but opening the locomotive of her throat
only sent certain crackerjacks out.

The truth when it spilled was white

like the ejaculate he had given her

as a present when she turned kind of four.
This was not the gift she had asked for.

So all the banshees that stuck

in her teeth like chicken, and all the lines

she crossed her arms with like noughts,
were so many touch and go bouts

of circumstantial evidence; or, straws

the drowning girl grasps for in the Pacific

when, having risen for the lucky third
time, she can no longer mime her furore

so breaks the silence like a biscuit in two.

And this new silence sounds abrupt

and is a siren call made only for you.